Mr. Gilbert had the earnest mania for self-improvement which has blighted the lives of so many young men.

The world has been printing books for 450 years, and yet gunpowder still has a wider circulation. Never mind! Printer's ink is the greater explosive: it will win.

We call a child's mind 'small' simply by habit; perhaps it is larger than ours is, for it can take in almost anything without effort.

There is an innate decorum in man, and it is not fair to thrust Truth upon people when they don't expect it. Only the very generous are ready for Truth impromptu.

We visit bookshops not so often to buy any one special book, but rather to rediscover, in the happier and more expressive words of others, our own encumbered soul.

The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets.

The man who never in his life Has washed the dishes with his wife Or polished up the silver plate - He still is largely celibate.